from the 640GB-ought-to-be-enough-for-now dept.
OPPO Find X to get 10GB RAM version, spotted at TENAA
There have been rumors of a 10GB RAM smartphone in development for a while now. Vivo's yet unreleased Xplay7 was rumored to come with 10GB RAM and the ASUS ROG Phone was also supposed to come with 10GB of RAM. It appears OPPO will be the first to launch a 10GB RAM phone judging by an updated TENAA listing of the Find X.
The Find X originally comes with 8GB of RAM and 128GB or 256GB of storage but Chinese leaker @UniverseIce shared a photo of an updated listing that shows the Find X will get a new 10GB RAM + 256GB ROM model.
We were able to confirm that the leak is genuine as the full TENAA specs listing for the Find X (PAFM00 model) now has a 10GB RAM variant. The update to the listing was made yesterday. The rest of the specs will remain the same as the other variant.
TENAA is China's phone regulatory body.
Also at The Verge, Engadget, Fossbytes, and BGR.
Related: Samsung Announces 12Gb LPDDR4 DRAM, Could Enable Smartphones With 6 GB of RAM
Samsung Announces 8 GB DRAM Package for Mobile Devices
Related Stories
Samsung has announced the mass production of 12 Gb (1.5 GB) LPDDR4 DRAM chips on a 20nm process. The state-of-the-art was previously 8 Gb. The new DRAM chips could enable the production of smartphones with 6 gigabytes of RAM:
The production of 12Gb chips opens up the possibility of smartphones and tablets with 6GB of RAM using a four 12Gb chip DRAM package, as well as 3GB using just two chips in a package. A 6GB package would also only take up the same amount of space as existing 3GB packages which use 6Gb chips. The new 12Gb chips also end up being very slightly more than 30% faster than their 8Gb chips, with a per-pin speed of 4266Mbps which would give 34Gbps of bandwidth over a 64bit bus. With Samsung beginning mass production of this new memory it's only a matter of time before we start to see more devices move from 2GB to 3GB and from 4GB to 6GB of RAM.
There are several phones on the market with 4 GB of RAM, such as the Oppo Find 9, Xiaomi Mi Note Pro, ASUS ZenFone 2, Sony Xperia Z4, Lenovo K80, Huawei Ascend D8, and soon, Micromax's YU5050. These manufacturers could use 12 Gb chips to create phones with 6 GB of faster RAM without using additional chips.
Samsung has announced an 8 GB LPDDR4 DRAM package intended for smartphones and tablets, using four 16 Gb (2 GB) chips manufactured on a 10nm-class process (probably 18nm):
Samsung this week announced its first LPDDR4 memory chips made using its 10nm-class DRAM fabrication technology. The new DRAM ICs feature the industry's highest density of 16 Gb, are rated to run at 4266 MT/s data rate, and open the door to more mobile devices with 8 GB of DRAM.
Earlier this year Samsung started to produce DDR4 memory using its 10nm-class DRAM manufacturing process (which is believed to be 18 nm) and recently the firm began to use it to make LPDDR4 memory devices, just as it planned. The thinner fabrication technology allowed Samsung to increase capacity of a single LPDDR4 DRAM IC to 16 Gb (up from 12 Gb at 20nm introduced in August, 2015) while retaining a 4266 MT/s transfer rate.
The first product to use the 16 Gb ICs is Samsung's 8 GB LPDDR4-4266 mobile DRAM package for smartphones, tablets, and other applications that can use LPDDR4. The device stacks four memory ICs and provides up to 34 GB/s of bandwidth when connected to an SoC using a 64-bit memory bus. The 8 GB DRAM package comes in a standard 15 mm x 15 mm x 1 mm form-factor, which is compatible with typical mobile devices, but Samsung can also make the package thinner than 1 mm to enable PoP stacking with a mobile application processor or a UFS NAND storage device.
The press release confirms the high data rate:
The new 8GB LPDDR4 operates at up to 4,266 megabits per second (Mbps), which is twice as fast as DDR4 DRAM for PCs working typically at 2,133 Mbps per pin. Assuming a 64 bit (x64) wide memory bus, this can be viewed as transmitting over 34GBs of data per second.
Tune in next year when I post about Samsung putting 12 GB of RAM in smartphones.
Previously:
Samsung Announces 12Gb LPDDR4 DRAM, Could Enable Smartphones With 6 GB of RAM
Samsung Announces "10nm-Class" 8 Gb DRAM Chips
Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 packs up to 10GB of RAM and a stunning 93% screen-to-body ratio
Following a tease by the company's president back in August, Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi has now officially announced its next all-screen monster handset, the Mi Mix 3.
Boasting a FHD+ AMOLED display with a stunning 93% screen-to-body ratio, the Mi Mix 3 also packs a powerful 2.8GHz Snapdragon 845 processor into its unique frame, along with the option of 6GB, 8GB or a whopping 10GB of RAM.
Those after the 10GB model will have to track down the 'Forbidden City' limited edition, which sports traditional Chinese styling, a 10W wireless Qi charger and a collectible statue.
All of the Mi Mix 3 phones will be exclusive to the Chinese market for now. The 10 GB version is priced at RMB 4,999 ($720).
Xiaomi also announced a gaming phone with up to 10 GB of RAM, the Black Shark Helo.
Also at Ars Technica and The Register.
Previously: Oppo Likely to Release the First Smartphone With 10 GB of RAM
Lenovo built a slider phone with 12GB of RAM
While Lenovo continues to push the Motorola brand in the West, it's also been busy doing its own thing back in China. Just last month, the company brought us the Z5 Pro all-screen slider phone which, to our surprise, packed mid-tier specs to woo the budget-conscious consumers. That's all well and good, but surely such a special form factor deserves the best specs available, right? This is where the new Z5 Pro GT comes in.
Announced at the Beijing event today, this new Android phone comes loaded with up to 12GB of RAM -- a new record for smartphones -- along with up to 512GB of storage. It's also the second smartphone confirmed to feature Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon 855 chipset, though unlike OnePlus' yet-to-be-named flagship device, Lenovo's slider won't be packing 5G radio.
[...] Despite being the first 12GB RAM smartphone, the Z5 Pro GT won't be available for pre-order until January 15th next year, ahead of the official launch on the 24th. Prices range from 2,698 yuan or about $390 for the 6GB RAM + 128GB storage version, all the way to 4,398 yuan or about $640 for the 12GB RAM + 512GB storage top model.
You know what's next. 16 GB.
Previously: Oppo Likely to Release the First Smartphone With 10 GB of RAM
Xiaomi Announces Smartphones with 10 GB of RAM
Samsung Begins Mass Production of 12 GB LPDDR4X for Smartphones
Samsung announced late on Wednesday that it had started volume production of 12 GB LPDDR4X-4266 memory for high-end smartphones. The chip is currently the highest-density DRAM for mobile applications. The first smartphone to use Samsung's 12 GB LPDDR4X DRAM package will be the company's own Galaxy S10+ handset formally announced last month.
Samsung's 12 GB LPDDR4X package integrates six 16 Gb memory devices featuring a 4266 MT/s data transfer rate at 1.1 Volts and produced using the company's second-generation '10nm-class' process technology (also known as 1y-nm). The 12 GB memory module is 1.1 mm tall, which is a bit higher than standard quad-die LPDDR4X packages (which are thinner than 1 mm), but Samsung has managed to incorporate the device into its latest premium smartphone.
Were the previously announced 12 GB DRAM smartphones using two packages instead of this one thick package?
Related: Samsung Announces 12Gb LPDDR4 DRAM, Could Enable Smartphones With 6 GB of RAM
Samsung Announces 8 GB DRAM Package for Mobile Devices
SK Hynix Announces 8 GB LPDDR4x DRAM Package for Mobile Devices
Oppo Likely to Release the First Smartphone With 10 GB of RAM
Xiaomi Announces Smartphones with 10 GB of RAM
Lenovo Announces a Smartphone With Up to 12 GB of RAM
Oppo Introduces MeshTalk – An Ad Hoc LAN With 3km Communication Range
Chinese smartphone manufacturer Oppo has had an eventful time at the Mobile World Congress, Shanghai. The company became the world's first to introduce a new camera technology that will become mainstream in due course of time. Additionally, it also surprised everyone by launching an inter-device communication framework dubbed 'Meshtalk'.
[...] Oppo's MeshTalk is a first of its kind technology that's introduced by a smartphone manufacturer. Prior to MeshTalk, apps like FireChat allowed users to send each other messages and photos in the absence of traditional mediums of data exchange such as Cellular, WiFi and Bluetooth networks. MeshTalk, according to Oppo, will also allow users to make calls and send voice messages within a 3km radius in open fields. This radius can also be achieved in urban environments through a phone's relay claims the company.
Our early look at the technology suggests that it's nothing more than an application of the principles of wireless mesh modes to Oppo's smartphones. A Mesh network works by configuring a device to send and receive data packets from another device. For a smartphone, this means that a gadget's WiFi and Bluetooth radios can be configured to send and receive information from other similarly configured smartphones. The aforementioned FireChat app, for example, works according to these principles. However, Oppo claims that a 'custom chip' is behind MeshTalk, so maybe we're looking at a novel approach with the new technology.
Also at The Verge, BGR, and Android Authority.
Related: Oppo Likely to Release the First Smartphone With 10 GB of RAM
Oppo Smartphone Camera System Includes 10x "Hybrid Zoom"
Oppo Demonstrates 10x Optical Zoom for Smartphone Cameras
A Bunch of Mobile World Congress 2019 Stories
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday September 29 2018, @02:35AM (4 children)
"Who the fark cares?".
A) Does it do what I want quickly? Can I afford it? If yes, buy.
B) Does it make up for a RAM shortfall via a faster CPU/modem, or vice versa? Don't care, go to A.
Forget the past, you can't change it. Forget the future, you cant predict it. Forget the present, I didn't get you one
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @02:43AM (3 children)
So, I doubt it.
Unless you think "Programmable" applies to "Constrained to the ideas of corporation-controlled 20-something-year-old man children".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Subsentient on Saturday September 29 2018, @05:27AM (2 children)
Agreed, the thing I absolutely hate about smartphones is how it's virtually impossible to run anything but some flavor of android on 99% of them. Then there's a very sizable portion that not only will only run the stock ROM, but won't give you root access. Evil. Android has twisted Linux into something hideous that spits in the face of everything Linux represents.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @11:37AM (1 child)
Kind of like what microsoft did to DOS. Look at windows today.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @03:25PM
I'd rather look inside the Ark of the Covenant.
(Score: 3, Touché) by jasassin on Saturday September 29 2018, @03:21AM (13 children)
That's a whole lot of ROM. WTF am I gonna do with 256GB of ROM?
???
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:02AM (4 children)
Well, if you're not filling your phone up with pirated Blu-rays, I'd imagine that storage would be used for apps and games.
Think back to the good ol' days of the failed Ubuntu Edge [wikipedia.org] concept phone. That was intended to be a PC replacement, and would have had 128 GB of storage. If you have the capability to use a docked phone as a desktop, you might be able to use all that space.
On the game front, as lame as playing on such a small screen could be, you could do the same docking thing, or use it with something along the lines of Gear VR for VR games or 360-degree videos.
You could simply use the phone like you would use a USB flash drive. I typically plug my phone into my laptop to charge it anyway.
It's not like 256 GB costs so much for the smartphone manufacturer. A 256 GB microSD might cost you around $65 [camelcamelcamel.com].
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:12AM (2 children)
Oh goody, apps and games in ROM, so you're stuck with them forever. Permanent, non-bugfix-replaceable, undeletable Facebook and Candy Crush.
ROM wouldn't do you a lick of good for storing copies of videos. It's read only. It contains stuff that's always present, that you can never delete, ever, without taking a brick to the device. Think Apple forcing U2 on everybody, only the phones come from the factory with the album preloaded and, because it's in ROM, you can never delete it.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday September 29 2018, @06:49PM (1 child)
I'm pretty sure when they say "ROM" they really mean "flash".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Sunday September 30 2018, @12:09AM
An Android phone's flash memory often contains gigabytes of (possibly abusive) F2P games and trialware. And the partition they're in is marked as read-only so that they remain available even after a factory reset. If an application gets updated, the user ends up with two copies: the older version in the read-only partition and the newer version downloaded from Google Play in the normal partition.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:14AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:04AM (2 children)
I've wondered that when I've seen phones advertising how much ROM they have. That's a whole lot of unremovable crapware.
Who gives a flying duck how much ROM a phone has? RAM, storage & expandability, screen size & resolution, camera characteristics: those are the kinds of things people are interested in. "Now with Facebook in ROM" is not a selling feature.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:17AM (1 child)
Ehhh, I'm pretty sure that was just a mistake in the article. Or had you already figured that out?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @06:29PM
Probably not a mistake in TFA, though you would expect a competent reporter to pick up on the error. I've looked up a few phones as a consideration for my next. A number of them highlight having large quantities of ROM without mentioning how much storage they have.
More likely is that some marketing drone has a handbook of computer buzzwords from the '80s or early '90s and noticed that RAM and ROM were often used together, so in their minds ROM equates to hard drive (or, more generally, storage). Regardless of the reason, if a company's marketing people are too dumb to distinguish ROM from storage, they're not getting my money.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:17AM (4 children)
All of it music, all from CDs that I own.
I readily agree that not everyone is so heavily into music, but some are.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @09:09AM (3 children)
Say you compress each CD to about 160MB (320kbps mp3s I think): 1563 CDs at 25$ a CD costs you some $40k... Putting aside the storage space issue, I think you've crossed the hobby bridge pass the passion crossroads into the dependency bad neighborhoods area.
"Nanna always said rock was the devils music but I wouldn't listen.
Now, here I am curled up in a street corner, strung out on old Bon Jovi mixtapes.
Nothing but a cardboard box to call a home..."
Will make a good Johnny Cash song.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @06:39PM (2 children)
So your iGadget, with its 256MB, is a very early generation MP3 player?
Your one CD just filled most of your 256MB of Flash. You'll probably want to compress your CD to 64kbps. The sound quality will be crap compared to your preferred 320kbps, but you'll be able to fit several CDs of music onto your iGadget.
It should be pointed out that your iGadget's meager 256 MB of Flash has one major benefit over the Otto phone's 256GB of ROM: your flash storage is rewritable. You can erase and replace the handful of CDs' music. ROMs, unless you have a personal burner, are factory-set. It's worse than when Steve Jobs forced that U2 album on everyone. If Otto puts the album in ROM, you're stuck with it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Saturday September 29 2018, @09:59PM (1 child)
There is no goddamn 256 GB of ROM. It's flash storage.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 30 2018, @09:59PM
RTFS. Then RTFA. R-O-M spells "ROM" -- read-only memory - not "flash". If the PR flack/article author insists on referring to the wrong type of storage and the editors neglect to point out an obvious stupid mistake and a commenter goofs up their megs and gigs then it behooves us to make fun of the lot of them. <grin>
You might want to cut back on the caffeine.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Saturday September 29 2018, @03:25AM (1 child)
It was there, then it wasn't. Now it's back again.
Time problems on the server?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:16AM
But the starship enterprise went to Uranus to wipe out the Klingons.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:15AM (11 children)
I was the only full-time coder for a company with twelve employees whose peak year during my time there was three million dollars gross.
The most hard drive I had through that time was eighty megabytes, the most RAM I think 16mb.
If I could write three million dollars worth of code with sixteen megabytes in 1992, why can't we _all_ do so in 2018?
There are some legitimate explanations, for example there is a great deal of value to the in-memory databases that 64-bit addressing affords us.
What gets me down is that many of today's most-popular applications are _dramatically_ slower than those of 1992. Shouldn't they be faster? I have a special hatred for {Open,Libre}Office. The time that elapses between my clicking their icon in my Mac's Dock until they're ready to accept user input is just inexcusable.
But let's set that problem aside from now.
Flappy Bird I understand made its author fifty grand PER DAY. That fellow had the right attitude. Surely more of us can come up with money-making yet resource-sparing products.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:49AM (4 children)
The modern code is slower because it is cheaper. Today's computers are good enough to deal with the overhead of the OS and standard frameworks. Those who think otherwise are always welcome to code in assembly language, it's supported on most/all platforms. Of course, hundreds of bank forms are coded a bit differently than a pacemaker.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @05:13AM (2 children)
Assembly language? No need since I entered the workforce 23 years ago.
Any simple compiled language will do, like C. Oh, and lay off the dozen framework layers.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday September 29 2018, @08:56AM (1 child)
Not to actually write any, nor to read disassemblies during debugging.
Rather it's to more intuitively understand what their high-level, interpreted code is doing to their CPU and their RAM.
Back in the day, some newbie posted to Usenet a question about how he could write a C program that would execute the chmod(1) command-line program. He was completely unaware that he could just use the chmod() system call.
That kind of newbie lack of insight is today found even among coders with ten or more years experience, because there are a great many who write nothing but Javascript during their entire careers.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @05:22PM
And every single one of those ignorant JS coders is a millionaire, because the techbro industry values young and stupid, just like you do, you old pedophile.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:37PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @04:58AM (4 children)
Back in 1992, we were all writing code that was "close" to the computer. By that I mean, while most of us weren't writing machine code, there were few layers of abstraction between the application code and the actual CPU execution layer.
Now there are so many layers upon layers of abstraction -- where abstraction equals "other people's code that we can't operate without yet we have no idea what it's really doing in that black box" -- that must be included/available for any application to work, that applications are relatively huge.
It's also the reason why so few of the recently graduated "programmers" are any good at real troubleshooting, because they really have no idea what the computer is actually doing. They don't program a computer, they send calls to API classes which do all the real work for them. Lets them worry about font size and eliminating skeuomorphism instead of logic or efficiency.
But I'm just a bitter old guy so what do I know?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @05:50AM (1 child)
Indeed, I did look now and then into sources of Qt to figure out why things don't work. Same with Atmel libraries. Found a crashing bug once in the library - without that fix the code would be a dead end.
That's what abundance of CPU speed and memory does to people. They choose the easiest, cheapest solution that can be sold to the equally undemanding customers. But things like high end CAD software or FPS games are coded with utmost respect to available CPU time.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday September 29 2018, @06:07AM
The system works.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday September 29 2018, @08:49AM (1 child)
I must say I often find some things today that are a vast improvement over their decades-ago equivalents:
Instead of artificial woodgrain veneer I usually find real wood. For example growing up my family's dining room table had woodgrain formica, but the table I own myself, that i bought in 1998, it's made of real wood - solid even, no veneer.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 29 2018, @11:42AM
Real wood is too expensive now
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 30 2018, @10:11PM
Over-reliance on abstraction and bloated libraries that rely on bloated libraries that rely on bloated libraries.
In 1992, you cared about optimizing code and reducing footprint size because you knew computers weren't that fast and didn't have a lot of memory or storage. (I remember the time: 16MB was an extravagance for my then-high-end 486/66, adding $1200 to the cost of my computer. 8MB was a lot and 4MB more common.) Today, nobody thinks twice about optimization. Processors are fast and getting faster every year, RAM and storage keeps getting faster and cheaper. Nobody has to take pride in shaving minutes (or hours) of runtime or kilobytes off their code anymore because the bloat will be absorbed by the next generation of hardware. It's quite sad, really.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 30 2018, @04:06AM
no one needs more than 640k.